In the late afternoon,
the beginning of darkness, finally alone
after doing some outlandish thing—

fucking an old friend, for instance,
or marching on authority with ambiguous intent,
and feeling yourself

at one with the pack, howling, hurling yourself at windows,
falling through the chimney
and into the third pig's stew—

evening shuts the door and covers the debris,
and you trudge back to your pickup truck or bus,
lower to the ground than transport ought to be,

arriving home to find the armchair slumped in the corner, 
the landscape of the living room remarkably unchanged
and this morning's coffee ringed inside the cup.

Later still as the pillow flattens
under the weight of your head, the pistol,
and the polyester bedspread your ex once brought to warm you,

the only sound
is the pulse inside your muffled ear, singular, wandering 
like footsteps through the snow.